Leaders Critique Text Selection

Day 1 Session 3

Objectives

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Leaders will be able to lead professional conversations with teachers and coaches around text complexity.

Leaders will be able to identify features of appropriately complex texts.

Quotes

“If you're not confused, you're not paying attention.” ― Tom Peters, Thriving on Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution

“I never knew anybody . . . who found life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you leave out the details.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Birthday of the World and Other Stories

“Simplicities are enormously complex. Consider the sentence "I love you".” ― Richard O. Moore, Writing the Silences

“It's simple, it's not that simple; or life is simple, but the things in it are not. When a man does not understand it, he tends to inflate it. When he does, he tends to deflate it. In the end, neither images are fully accurate.” ― Criss Jami, Killosophy

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Determining Text Complexity is Complex!

• Quantitative - Readability measures and other scores of text complexity

• Qualitative - Levels of meaning, structure, language conventionality and clarity, and knowledge demands

• Reader and Task - Reader variables (motivation, knowledge, and experiences) and task variables (assigned task and questions)

What is Text Complexity?

• CCSS Appendix A (pages 4–9)

• Text Complexity Notes Qualitative Measures of Text Complexity

Quantitative Measures of Text Complexity

Reader and Task Considerations

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Quantitative

• The quantitative dimension of text complexity refers to those aspects that are difficult for a human reader to evaluate when examining a text.

• These factors are more efficiently measured by computer programs.

• Quantitative measures of text complexity generally measure word difficulty (frequency, length) and sentence length.

• Some metrics add other features of words, sentence syntax, and text cohesion, creating a broader range of text and linguistic measures.

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Quantitative

Multiple resources and tools are available for determining quantitative level of text complexity

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Qualitative

Determining complexity in literary and informational texts•Rubric

What key differences do you find as you move from most to least complex texts?

What impact does text complexity have on instruction? Scaffolding?

Where, how, and by whom do you see this rubric used currently?

•Examples•Practice

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Qualitative

Read:•“On the Rainy River”•“The Red Convertible”

Use rubric for text

Discuss: •Why did you select the rating?•What evidence backs the selected rating?

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Qualitative

Read:

•“Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr.

•“In This Blind Alley” by Ahmad Shamlu

•“Freedom” by Rabindranath Tagore

•“Women” by Alice Walker

Use rubric for text

Discuss:

•Why did you select the rating?

•What evidence backs the selected rating?

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Reader and Task Considerations

• Examples of reader and task considerations

• Look at Performance Tasks listed in Appendix B Why are performance tasks important?

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Reader and Task Considerations

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How does the text support the assigned task and questions?

Write a performance task based on the text and the tasks.

Wrap up

• What are the immediate and long term needs?

• What are your priorities for implementation?

• What steps will you take to support teachers with understanding text complexity?

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